I'm new to this forum having just joined literally this minute, or perhaps a little while ago depending on when you read this. I thought this would be the right place for an introduction.

Well, why have I joined this forum?

I'm not sure really what I'll get out of joining and being a part of your discussions here. I have since I've been very young always had very vivid and occasionally lucid dreams. Most of the time my dreams are completely crazy and I'm always aware I've dreamed every night. I have solved problems and even worked through issues through my dreams before and I'm a great believer that they are a huge source of our imagination and creativity.

I've been thinking recently to try and learn more about dreams and my connection to my own dreams and improve them, my recollection of them and their lucidity. I guess that's why I've joined this forum. I can't wait to do some reading here and join in with some discussions with you all. I really hope I can learn some new and interesting things.

Hi, welcome and hope you find what you're looking for. You left out the most important thing about dreams and nightmares- they're the only place we really meet ourselves and experience ourselves as other do.

"There is only one God and his name is Death.And there is only one thing we say to death "not today"- Syrio Forel

For some reason I don't seem to experience nightmares any more, or at least don't remember them I guess. The last one I remember having was about 5 or so years ago and I remember getting scared in a dream and thinking wait... I don't want this, this is not going to happen and I just simply changed it into a more pleasant dream. I'd done that a few times before with nightmares that featured odd things that couldn't be real and found those dreams easiest to change as they were dreams I just didn't want to accept at all.

Well I'd never been seriously into trying to lucid dream before but I'd had the occasional lucid dream and just enjoyed them and never did any research or attempted to purposefully recreate them before. Dreams do fascinate me though in general not just the lucid type and I stumbled upon this forum whilst doing some google searches and I thought why not have a go and see if I can have more lucid dreams. I thought it would be interesting to explore my dreams more.

So yesterday I did a little reading here and thought I should start a dream journal, I'd never made one before but it seems like a good first step. I went out and bought a notepad and pen and put it beside my bed. I downloaded some strange relaxing music which almost put me into a trance and set my alarm and went to sleep. My alarm woke me up in the morning and so the first thing I did was sit up in my bed and take a few seconds to wake up. I never wake up completely right away, I'm always confused and half asleep when I wake for a few moments. So I just sat there a while to give myself a chance to wake up fully and I concentrated on the dream I just had trying to remember all the details. Then I reached for my notepad and wrote the details down in my new dream journal. I decided after that to go back to sleep as I still felt a bit tired. I listened again to the strange trance music and went back to sleep.

I awoke again quite late as I didn't set an alarm the second time, maybe 12 hours after I'd originally gone to sleep. I felt very refreshed after a long sleep and instantly awake. I couldn't remember my last dream after the one I wrote down but still had the one I wrote in my memory. I thought I'd check the dream journal feeling still a little unsure of what I wrote thinking I might add or remember some extra details. To my complete surprise I opened the pad and the pages were blank. I checked the back of the pad too thinking I must have wrote on the wrong side and nothing too. I couldn't believe it. I'd been had by a false awakening. Luckily I could still remember a lot of the details of the dream and then wrote them in the journal.

I can't believe that happened with the first time I try to keep a journal. I did a reality check pressing fingers together too. I've had some false awakenings before but not for many years or not realised I've had one for many years, it was a bit of a shock finding that notepad blank. Probably one of the strangest dreams I ever had was kind of the reverse of that, I don't know what you'd call it. I was reading a book when I was about 12 years old lying on my bed and I unwittingly fell asleep for a couple of minutes but dreamed I was still reading the same book and the change from reality and the dream appeared to me seamless, I had no idea I was asleep. Then I awoke whilst thinking I was awake and it was like a huge jolt of shock going through my body. You don't expect to wake up whilst thinking you are awake. I wonder if anyone can explain what happened there as I was only asleep for a couple of minutes on that occasion and I've always wondered ever since what happened and it never happened again.

Cool! that happened to me too (blank notebook) But the thing is my pencil just didn't have any lead in it when I tried writing down the dream haha. Also you don't want to wake yourself fully up in the morning, you are more likely to forgot about you dreams this way.

I had a very intense and powerful experience this morning with a lucid dream I had and I wonder if anyone can explain what happened.

Recently I've been listening to some isochronic tones. I downloaded one that I found on a link from this site to another site and I must admit I was a little sceptical about what they can do. This particular tone I listened to a few times mostly before going to bed and I was surprised how relaxed it made me feel and virtually put me into a trance like state and made my limbs feel very heavy and relaxed and gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling too.

After experiencing this I started looking around for other isochronic tones and I found there are loads out there all with different purposes and apparent effects. I decided to download one that is supposed to help with lucid dreaming. This tone was 40 minutes long and the first 20 minutes is just silence and what you are supposed to do is wake up early and then start listening and go back to sleep and hopefully get to sleep in the first 20 minutes and listen to the rest whilst asleep which will alter your brainwaves into a state conducive to lucid dreaming.

Well I did this and I found that when the second 20 minutes played it seemed to just wake me up and so I tried this 3 times this morning and thought well that's not really working and took my earphones off and just went to sleep afterwards as I was still tired. Then I had an incredible experience which I cannot quite explain or put into words and I am left unsure what exactly happened so I will attempt to describe it.

As I said I decided to give up and just go back to sleep for a couple of hours and as I fell asleep or right after I fell asleep I don't know but I started to feel my body getting very heavy, so heavy it felt like I was sinking right through my mattress. At the same time I felt these vibrations surging through my body and it felt like a weight on my chest but my chest was being pulled upwards whilst my body still felt like it was sinking though the mattress. The next thing I'm aware of is that I'm getting out of bed thinking I'm awake but my every movement is very laboured and it's a struggle to move anywhere as I feel kind of half paralysed and my muscles don't seem to want to work. It's also very hard to see properly or to even focus my eyes but I feel very awake and pretty damn freaked out too. Eventually I have the strength to wander around the house, I feel confident I'm awake but just very drowsy and I take a trip to the bathroom and look in the mirror. I can see everything clearly now, crystal clear in fact but my reflection in the mirror is shaking up and down so violently I can't recognise myself in the mirror at all. I'm feeling pretty freaked out by this and start thinking maybe I am dreaming but everything feels so real. The next thing I remember is being transported to another place. I won't bore you with the rest of the details as it was clear to me from this point on I was dreaming and my dream seemed like any other of my crazy dreams aside from the fact I was very lucid or at least thought so and the dream was probably one of the most vivid I've ever experienced.

Now I've been lucid in dreams before and had some incredibly vivid or realistic dreams before. I've never used isochronic tones as an aid or purposefully attempted to lucid dream before, when it's happened I guess it's happened naturally on it's own or maybe I've thought it has. I've never experienced the heaviness or vibrations before or the whole experience I had preceding my dream. It felt like a very powerful and intense experience. I wonder if it was some kind of out of body experience or something to do with sleep paralysis or maybe I even sleep walked to my bathroom or did I just take in everything I've been reading and dream up the whole incident in extremely vivid detail? The only thing I'm sure of is the feeling that I experienced something very intense and powerful, beyond what I've experienced before.

Does anyone hear have any idea what I'm talking about or have any possible explanation for what occurred?

As I said I decided to give up and just go back to sleep for a couple of hours and as I fell asleep or right after I fell asleep I don't know but I started to feel my body getting very heavy, so heavy it felt like I was sinking right through my mattress. At the same time I felt these vibrations surging through my body and it felt like a weight on my chest but my chest was being pulled upwards whilst my body still felt like it was sinking though the mattress.

This was a vanilla sleep paralysis dream.

The next thing I'm aware of is that I'm getting out of bed thinking I'm awake but my every movement is very laboured and it's a struggle to move anywhere as I feel kind of half paralysed and my muscles don't seem to want to work. It's also very hard to see properly or to even focus my eyes but I feel very awake and pretty damn freaked out too. Eventually I have the strength to wander around the house, I feel confident I'm awake but just very drowsy and I take a trip to the bathroom and look in the mirror. I can see everything clearly now, crystal clear in fact but my reflection in the mirror is shaking up and down so violently I can't recognise myself in the mirror at all. I'm feeling pretty freaked out by this and start thinking maybe I am dreaming but everything feels so real. The next thing I remember is being transported to another place. I won't bore you with the rest of the details as it was clear to me from this point on I was dreaming and my dream seemed like any other of my crazy dreams aside from the fact I was very lucid or at least thought so and the dream was probably one of the most vivid I've ever experienced.

Now I've been lucid in dreams before and had some incredibly vivid or realistic dreams before. I've never used isochronic tones as an aid or purposefully attempted to lucid dream before, when it's happened I guess it's happened naturally on it's own or maybe I've thought it has. I've never experienced the heaviness or vibrations before or the whole experience I had preceding my dream. It felt like a very powerful and intense experience. I wonder if it was some kind of out of body experience or something to do with sleep paralysis or maybe I even sleep walked to my bathroom or did I just take in everything I've been reading and dream up the whole incident in extremely vivid detail? The only thing I'm sure of is the feeling that I experienced something very intense and powerful, beyond what I've experienced before.

You had a vanilla false awakening. It's normal to have all five senses working vividly in a FA. You had the three opportunities to know it was a false awakening: your slow muscles; your blurred vision and your mirror image. Often one gets no "tells" that one is in a FA and they often occur back to back.

"There is only one God and his name is Death.And there is only one thing we say to death "not today"- Syrio Forel

Thanks for the reply. I've been going over and over in my mind what happened and I just can't believe I had this experience. When I've felt lucid in dreams before when I was younger I was already asleep and dreaming at the time, this experience was totally different and felt more powerful and real.

If I'd have known I was dreaming right away I would have done something more interesting than wander around the house. The mirror was the clincher for me. I mean it was definitely very weird, before that point I just thought I was incredibly groggy although I've never been that groggy after waking before. My vision was very blurry for ages and it took a while before I could even stand up. Once I saw the mirror I ended up transporting to some other place where I saw a work colleague on a bench and I started telling him all about what just happened. After that I don't have a clear memory of what happened, I think my dream probably turned into a regular non lucid dream from then onwards.

At some point I'll try to recreate the conditions and try to have another similar experience. I have to say it did freak me out somewhat though so I might not try for a little while. I wasn't scared really I was more shocked I think, especially with the mirror. Also the struggle moving and seeing was concerning at the time as I didn't know what was happening despite reading about such things. Next time I'll know not to worry as much. The heaviness and sinking feeling was awesome, like floating away, that felt really nice but the vibrations weren't very pleasant at all. Next time it would be better if I'm not sat on my bed struggling to get up for so long.

Well I guess I should stop writing all this in my hello topic soon, lol.

I decided this past weekend to do some more lucid dreaming. I did the same as before and woke up early about 4 and half hours after going to bed and then listened to this isochronic tone like I did before and then just relaxed on my bed and allowed myself to drift away. Well it happened again pretty much just like before. My body got really heavy, the vibrations came although not as strong as before and I found myself in my bedroom again struggling to get out of my bed. The feeling of paralysis this time wasn't so severe and I managed to get up and see quite quickly this time. I knew I was dreaming as when I looked through the gap in my bedroom door I could clearly see that the room beyond wasn't my flat. I don't know where it was from but it wasn't my flat. So I eagerly stepped out of my room into a very well lit room. The colours were literally glowing off the walls. There was a mirror there so I took a peak and it the reflection was so dim I could barely see it which is odd for such a well lit room. I struggled harder to see it and saw that my refection was that of an old woman. I'm actually only 37 btw.

After last time I thought I should try something more fun this time so I made a little jump and decided to levitate. Wow that was pretty awesome and felt so real. I was floating about a foot off the floor and the inertia of the jump propelled propelled me across the room in a soft glide. I got so excited that I actually woke up. I closed my eyes again and the heaviness vibrations came again. This time I didn't find myself in my bed room but felt my consciousness speeding across vast vistas and landscapes at what seemed like hundreds of miles an hour. It was really exhilarating but also pretty short lived and when I woke I fell back asleep normally and woke a few hours later remembering some normal non lucid dreams.

When I woke for the last time I felt pretty exhausted and was fairly tired for the rest of the day. I noticed this last week also when I did some lucid dreaming. Is it normal to feel so tired afterwards? Maybe it was because I only had 4 and a half hours of sleep first. If I felt a little uneasy after the time last week that feeling totally disappeared after this time. It's strange because whilst in my room trying to get over the paralysed feeling I could feel like there was a presence in the room but it wasn't scary it was like the feeling of having someone you love and trust watching over you.